The presiding justice waited until all the prisoners took their places, and as soon as Maslova was seated, he turned to the secretary.

Then commenced the customary proceeding; calling of the jurymen, fining the absent ones, listening to the claims of exemption from jury duty and filling the panel from a number of reserves.  Then the presiding justice folded the slips of paper, placed them in a glass vase, and turning up his gold-laced sleeve drew the slips one by one, unrolled them and read them aloud.  Then he straightened his sleeve and called on the priest to swear in the jury.

An old little priest with a swollen, pale yellow face, in a brown cassock and gold cross on his breast and some small badges pinned to the cassock, slowly moving his swollen feet under the cassock, approached the reading desk under the image.

The jury rose and, crowding each other, came forward.

“Come nearer, please,” said the priest, touching with his swollen hand the cross on his breast, and waiting until all the jury were near him.

While the jury were mounting the steps to the elevation where the desk stood, the priest wriggled his bald, hoary head through the opening of the stole, then rearranging his scanty hair, he turned to the jury: 

“Raise your right hands and keep your fingers thus,” he said, in a slow, feeble voice, raising his bloated hand and pointing at his forehead with the first three of its dimpled fingers.  “Now repeat after me:  ’I promise and swear by the Almighty God, His Holy Gospel, and by the life-giving cross of our Lord, that in the case’”—­he continued, resting after each phrase.  “Don’t drop your hand; hold it thus,” he turned to a young man who let his hand fall—­“’that in the case which——­’”

The portly, whiskered gentleman, the colonel, merchant and others held their hands as directed by the priest, and seemed to do so with particular pleasure, holding their hands quite high, and their fingers most proper; others seemed to do it against their will, and carelessly.  Some repeated the words too loudly, in a provoking manner, with an expression on the face which seemed to say:  “I will repeat as I please;” others whispered, fell behind the priest and then, as if frightened, hastened to catch up with him.  Some held their fingers tightly closed, as if challenging anyone to part them; others, again, loosened them, now closed them again.  After the jury was sworn, the presiding justice directed them to choose a foreman.  They arose and, crowding each other, went into the consultation room, where almost every one produced cigarettes and began to smoke.  Some one proposed the portly gentleman, who was immediately chosen, then they threw away their cigarettes and returned to the court.  The gentleman declared to the presiding justice that he was chosen foreman, and stepping over the feet of each other, the jury again seated themselves in the two rows of high-backed chairs.